You have never gone after
what you really wanted.
Sure, at the last moment, you
have desperately leaped out
and tried to grab on to something
as it went by. That doesn’t count;
you never stood a chance,
you never put all of your heart
and soul on the line, to humbly and
doggedly pursue anything at all.

Maybe you’ve never needed
anything, but I think that’s a lie
and you know it. You might say
that you needed it too much,
so much so that even the thought
of failing is too painful to endure.
You froze that feeling out, called it
impractical, unreasonable,
unnecessary. Those were lies
as well. You can hide behind the lies
but they will never feed your soul.

There is something you need.
Something you want down to
the very spark of your being,
something that will fill you up
with the life force of the universe
and set you ablaze to hang
in the heavens, among the stars.

You can continue failing through
inaction, hoping your passion
will atrophy, and it might, but that
inner you, the you that wants so
many things for you, it will atrophy
too, until you are a husk
of a person. There is nothing
sadder than a person who
used to have fire within their soul.

You can choose to smother yourself
or you can choose to go for it,
to coax that spark to flame and feed
the fire until it blazes forward carrying
you along. You can choose.

NCL September 2019